The Prostitute

Felix Cheong Seng Fei

There are days
I canšt look in the mirror
without seeing the men
who left lips on my
skin, without feeling
hands raiding pleasure from my
breasts, without shivering
to a tide of tongues up my
thighs, without tasting rage
cocked in my mouth.

There are nights
I no longer trust my
capacity for love, its instinct to hold
and to touch; I no longer know
my own body, the way it writhes
and writes its will on the bed,
how it lies even as it is laid.
What I have given
I have no way of reclaiming

and there is little of me
after the wet sheets, the white towels
and the dry fucking but for
these eyes, older now
but still brown and hard as earth,
eyes I recognise
as wholly, entirely, completely
mine.

Published in Broken by the Rain (2003)

Last Modified: 5 September 2003